Eight years after Amitav Ghosh warned about Mumbai billboards, the Jnanpith-winning writer on Tuesday called out the coastal road project in Mumbai as a “disaster in the making”.
Ghosh’s anguish over the coastal road project was prompted by news reports of leakage in the tunnels while the monsoon is still almost two weeks away.
“Completely predictable,” wrote Ghosh on his X (formerly Twitter) handle. “Mumbai’s coastal highway is a disaster in the making. But some construction companies made a lot of money so how does it matter?”
The partially opened multi-phase Mumbai Coastal Road that connects Worli to Princess Street flyover was inaugurated on March 11.
It has been a major point of friction between the Eknath Shinde-led government and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, over the delays.
How Amitav Ghosh’s prediction about Mumbai billboards came true
In his 2016 non-fiction book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, that emerged from a series of lectures delivered by the writer at the University of Chicago on the absence of climate change in contemporary literature, Ghosh had cited the cities of Mumbai, Miami and New York.
“In The Great Derangement I wrote that in the event of a major storm the thousands of billboards that encrust ‘Mumbai would turn into deadly projectiles’. The recent storm was nowhere near as damaging as a major cyclone would be. Mumbai really needs to cut back drastically on billboards,” Ghosh wrote on May 14, the day 17 people died after a giant billboard collapsed near a petrol pump in suburban Ghatkopar.
In the 2016 book, Ghosh wrote: “Many of Mumbai’s tall buildings have large glass windows, few, if any, are reinforced. In a cyclone these exposed expanses of glass will have to withstand, nit just hurricane strength winds, but also flying debris. Many of the dwelling in Mumbai’s informal settlements have roofs made of metal sheets and corrugated iron, cyclone force winds will turn these, and the thousands of billboards that encrust the city, into deadly projectiles, hurling them with great force at the glass-wrapped towers that soar above the city.”
Ghosh has also warned in his writings that global warming will cause more cyclones to emerge from the Arabian Sea.
Maharashtra chief minister assures people
The Dharmveer Swarajya Rakshak Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Coastal Road project, conceived in 2011, is to connect Worli in Mumbai to Kandivali in the north-west with eight lanes. The ongoing construction of the coastal road since it was rolled out in 2018 and the never-ending Metro projects have kept India's financial capital in permanent dug-up mode.
The leakage was first observed on Sunday morning and dark spots have replaced parts of the walls where the paint has chipped off. On April 10, the Haji Ali Coastal road pedestrian underpass was inundated during high tide, for which the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation is working out a solution.
The Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde has announced the north bound traffic from Marine Drive to Haji Ali would be allowed from June 10 onwards, despite the rising concerns over the leakages.
"There were leakages in two to three expansion joints of the coastal road, and they will be plugged using polymer grouting,” Chief Minister Shinde was quoted as having told journalists after inspecting the site. “I have suggested polymer grouting on all 25 joints on each side of the tunnel to avoid water seepage even during the monsoon.”
He assured that the repair work would not disrupt vehicular movement on the coastal road, ensuring that motorists would not face any inconvenience.
